A new study authored by Professor Anthony Westerling and his colleagues projected how climate change would affect Greater Yellowstone wildfires through the year 2099 and discusses the kind of impact it would have on the Yellowstone ecosystem.

For the purpose of the study, environmental engineering and geography Professor Westerling, University of California, Merced, and his colleagues compiled data from 1972 to 1999 and compared it with existing data available on wildfires that occurred in the northern Rocky Mountains during the same period.

The resulting statistical patterns revealed that while the projected increase in wildfires as a result of climate change was by itself not surprising, the rapidity and extent of such an increase and the consistency of changes across different climate projections was a matter of concern.

Monica Turner, the Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, suggests that the altered relationship between climate change and fires could set off a chain where a warming climate could trigger larger and more frequent wildfires in the Greater Yellowstone.

In the researchers' simulations, projections revealed that years with no large fires became rarer and rarer while the area burned, because of wildfires, became larger and larger.

Westerling posits that by 2050, there would most likely be a major shift in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, which could be characterized by fewer dense forests, more open woodland, grass and shrub vegetation.

Forests would become younger, mixes of tree species could change and some forests could even fail to regenerate after frequent fires. The region's natural habitat, hydrology, carbon storage and aesthetics would be radically altered and affected.

"The climatic conditions projected for the second half of this century are similar to what we see in areas of the West today that have different forest types from Yellowstone's," Westerling said in a press release.

Administering a word of caution, Westerling said that the climate models used would no longer be valid if there was a fundamental change in the ecosystem because a landscape change would alter the relationship between climate and fires. This in turn would alter the nature of projections.

UC Merced is the first American research university of the 21st century that also serves as a major base of advanced research and as a stimulus to economic growth and diversification throughout the region.